LETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCHON THE COLLABORATION OF MEN AND WOMENIN THE CHURCH AND IN THE WORLD

INTRODUCTION

1. The Church, expert in humanity, has a perennial interest in whatever concerns
men and women. In recent times, much reflection has been given to the question
of the dignity of women and to women's rights and duties in the different areas
of civil society and the Church. Having contributed to a deeper understanding of
this fundamental question, in particular through the teaching of John Paul II,1
the Church is called today to address certain currents of thought which are
often at variance with the authentic advancement of women.

After a brief presentation and critical evaluation of some current conceptions
of human nature, this document will offer reflections – inspired by the
doctrinal elements of the biblical vision of the human person that are
indispensable for safeguarding his or her identity – on some of the essentials
of a correct understanding of active collaboration, in recognition of the
difference between men and women in the Church and in the world. These
reflections are meant as a starting point for further examination in the Church,
as well as an impetus for dialogue with all men and women of good will, in a
sincere search for the truth and in a common commitment to the development of
ever more authentic relationships.

I. THE QUESTION

2. Recent years have seen new approaches to women's issues. A first tendency is
to emphasize strongly conditions of subordination in order to give rise to
antagonism: women, in order to be themselves, must make themselves the
adversaries of men. Faced with the abuse of power, the answer for women is to
seek power. This process leads to opposition between men and women, in which the
identity and role of one are emphasized to the disadvantage of the other,
leading to harmful confusion regarding the human person, which has its most
immediate and lethal effects in the structure of the family.

A second tendency emerges in the wake of the first. In order to avoid the
domination of one sex or the other, their differences tend to be denied, viewed
as mere effects of historical and cultural conditioning. In this perspective,
physical difference, termed sex, is minimized, while the purely cultural
element, termed gender, is emphasized to the maximum and held to be
primary. The obscuring of the difference or duality of the sexes has enormous
consequences on a variety of levels. This theory of the human person, intended
to promote prospects for equality of women through liberation from biological
determinism, has in reality inspired ideologies which, for example, call into
question the family, in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father,
and make homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent, in a new model
of polymorphous sexuality.

3. While the immediate roots of this second tendency are found in the context of
reflection on women's roles, its deeper motivation must be sought in the human
attempt to be freed from one's biological conditioning.2 According to
this perspective, human nature in itself does not possess characteristics in an
absolute manner: all persons can and ought to constitute themselves as they
like, since they are free from every predetermination linked to their essential
constitution.

This perspective has many consequences. Above all it strengthens the idea that
the liberation of women entails criticism of Sacred Scripture, which would be
seen as handing on a patriarchal conception of God nourished by an essentially
male-dominated culture. Second, this tendency would consider as lacking in
importance and relevance the fact that the Son of God assumed human nature in
its male form.

4. In the face of these currents of thought, the Church, enlightened by faith in
Jesus Christ, speaks instead of active collaboration between the sexes
precisely in the recognition of the difference between man and woman.

To understand better the basis, meaning and consequences of this response it is
helpful to turn briefly to the Sacred Scriptures, rich also in human wisdom, in
which this response is progressively manifested thanks to God's intervention on
behalf of humanity.3

II. BASIC ELEMENTS OF THE BIBLICAL VISION OF THE HUMAN PERSON

5. The first biblical texts to examine are the first three chapters of Genesis.
Here we “enter into the setting of the biblical ‘beginning'. In it the revealed
truth concerning the human person as ‘the image and likeness' of God constitutes
the immutable basis of all Christian anthropology”.4

The first text (Gn 1:1-2:4) describes the creative power of the Word of
God, which makes distinctions in the original chaos. Light and darkness appear,
sea and dry land, day and night, grass and trees, fish and birds, “each
according to its kind”. An ordered world is born out of differences, carrying
with them also the promise of relationships. Here we see a sketch of the
framework in which the creation of the human race takes place: “God said ‘Let us
make man in our image, after our likeness'” (Gn 1:26). And then: “God
created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and
female he created them” (Gn1:27). From the very beginning therefore,
humanity is described as articulated in the male-female relationship. This is
the humanity, sexually differentiated, which is explicitly declared “the image
of God”.

6. The second creation account (Gn 2:4-25) confirms in a definitive way
the importance of sexual difference. Formed by God and placed in the garden
which he was to cultivate, the man, who is still referred to with the generic
expression Adam, experienced a loneliness which the presence of the
animals is not able to overcome. He needs a helpmate who will be his
partner. The term here does not refer to an inferior, but to a vital helper.5
This is so that Adam's life does not sink into a sterile and, in the end,
baneful encounter with himself. It is necessary that he enter into relationship
with another being on his own level. Only the woman, created from the same
“flesh” and cloaked in the same mystery, can give a future to the life of the
man. It is therefore above all on the ontological level that this takes place,
in the sense that God's creation of woman characterizes humanity as a relational
reality. In this encounter, the man speaks words for the first time, expressive
of his wonderment: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gn
2:23).

As the Holy Father has written with regard to this text from Genesis, “...woman
is another ‘I' in a common humanity. From the very beginning they appear as a
‘unity of the two', and this signifies that the original solitude is overcome,
the solitude in which man does not find ‘a helper fit for him' (Gn 2:20).
Is it only a question here of a ‘helper' in activity, in ‘subduing the earth'
(cf. Gn 1:28)? Certainly it is a matter of a life's companion with whom,
as a wife, the man can unite himself, becoming with her ‘one flesh' and for this
reason leaving ‘his father and his mother'(cf. Gn 2:24)”.6

This vital difference is oriented toward communion and was lived in peace,
expressed by their nakedness: “And the man and his wife were both naked, yet
they felt no shame” (Gn 2:25). In this way, the human body, marked with
the sign of masculinity or femininity, “includes right from the beginning the
nuptial attribute, that is, the capacity of expressing love, that love in
which the person becomes a gift and – by means of this gift – fulfils the
meaning of his being and his existence”.7 Continuing his commentary
on these verses of Genesis, the Holy Father writes: “In this peculiarity, the
body is the expression of the spirit and is called, in the mystery of creation,
to exist in the communion of persons in the image of God”.8

Through this same spousal perspective, the ancient Genesis narrative allows us
to understand how woman, in her deepest and original being, exists “for the
other” (cf. 1 Cor 11:9): this is a statement which, far from any sense of
alienation, expresses a fundamental aspect of the similarity with the Triune
God, whose Persons, with the coming of Christ, are revealed as being in a
communion of love, each for the others. “In the ‘unity of the two', man and
woman are called from the beginning not only to exist ‘side by side' or
‘together', but they are also called to exist mutually ‘one for the other'...
The text of Genesis 2:18-25 shows that marriage is the first and, in a sense,
the fundamental dimension of this call. But it is not the only one. The whole of
human history unfolds within the context of this call. In this history, on the
basis of the principle of mutually being ‘for' the other in interpersonal
‘communion', there develops in humanity itself, in accordance with God's will,
the integration of what is ‘masculine' and what is ‘feminine'”.9

The peaceful vision which concludes the second creation account recalls the
“indeed it was very good” (Gn 1:31) at the end of the first account. Here
we find the heart of God's original plan and the deepest truth about man and
woman, as willed and created by him. Although God's original plan for man and
woman will later be upset and darkened by sin, it can never be abrogated.

7. Original sin changes the way in which the man and the woman receive and live
the Word of God as well as their relationship with the Creator. Immediately
after having given them the gift of the garden, God gives them a positive
command (cf. Gn 2:16), followed by a negative one (cf. Gn 2:17),
in which the essential difference between God and humanity is implicitly
expressed. Following enticement by the serpent, the man and the woman deny this
difference. As a consequence, the way in which they live their sexual difference
is also upset. In this way, the Genesis account establishes a relationship of
cause and effect between the two differences: when humanity considers God its
enemy, the relationship between man and woman becomes distorted. When this
relationship is damaged, their access to the face of God risks being compromised
in turn.

God's decisive words to the woman after the first sin express the kind of
relationship which has now been introduced between man and woman: “your desire
shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (Gn 3:16). It will
be a relationship in which love will frequently be debased into pure
self-seeking, in a relationship which ignores and kills love and replaces it
with the yoke of domination of one sex over the other. Indeed the story of
humanity is continuously marked by this situation, which recalls the three-fold
concupiscence mentioned by Saint John: the concupiscence of the flesh, the
concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life (cf. 1 Jn 2:16). In this
tragic situation, the equality, respect and love that are required in the
relationship of man and woman according to God's original plan, are lost.

8. Reviewing these fundamental texts allows us to formulate some of the principal
elements of the biblical vision of the human person.

Above all, the fact that human beings are persons needs to be underscored: “Man
is a person, man and woman equally so, since both were created in the image
and likeness of the personal God”.10 Their equal dignity as persons
is realized as physical, psychological and ontological complementarity, giving
rise to a harmonious relationship of “uni-duality”, which only sin and “the
structures of sin” inscribed in culture render potentially conflictual. The
biblical vision of the human person suggests that problems related to sexual
difference, whether on the public or private level, should be addressed by a
relational approach and not by competition or retaliation.

Furthermore, the importance and the meaning of sexual difference, as a reality
deeply inscribed in man and woman, needs to be noted. “Sexuality characterizes
man and woman not only on the physical level, but also on the psychological and
spiritual, making its mark on each of their expressions”.11 It cannot
be reduced to a pure and insignificant biological fact, but rather “is a
fundamental component of personality, one of its modes of being, of
manifestation, of communicating with others, of feeling, of expressing and of
living human love”.12 This capacity to love – reflection and image of
God who is Love – is disclosed in the spousal character of the body, in which
the masculinity or femininity of the person is expressed.

The human dimension of sexuality is inseparable from the theological dimension.
The human creature, in its unity of soul and body, is characterized therefore,
from the very beginning, by the relationship with the other-beyond-the-self.
This relationship is presented as still good and yet, at the same time, changed.
It is good from its original goodness, declared by God from the first moment of
creation. It has been changed however by the disharmony between God and humanity
introduced by sin. This alteration does not correspond to the initial plan of
God for man and woman, nor to the truth of the relationship between the sexes.
It follows then that the relationship is good, but wounded and in need of
healing.

What might be the ways of this healing? Considering and analyzing the problems
in the relationship between the sexes solely from the standpoint of the
situation marked by sin would lead to a return to the errors mentioned above.
The logic of sin needs to be broken and a way forward needs to be found that is
capable of banishing it from the hearts of sinful humanity. A clear orientation
in this sense is provided in the third chapter of Genesis by God's promise of a
Saviour, involving the “woman” and her “offspring” (cf. Gn 3:15). It is a
promise which will be preceded by a long preparation in history before it is
realized.

9. An early victory over evil is seen in the story of Noah, the just man, who
guided by God, avoids the flood with his family and the various species of
animals (cf. Gn 6-9). But it is above all in God's choice of Abraham and
his descendants (cf. Gn 12:1ff) that the hope of salvation is confirmed.
God begins in this way to unveil his countenance so that, through the chosen
people, humanity will learn the path of divine likeness, that is, the way of
holiness, and thus of transformation of heart. Among the many ways in which God
reveals himself to his people (cf. Heb 1:1), in keeping with a long and
patient pedagogy, there is the recurring theme of the covenant between man and
woman. This is paradoxical if we consider the drama recounted in Genesis and its
concrete repetition in the time of the prophets, as well as the mixing of the
sacred and the sexual found in the religions which surrounded Israel. And yet
this symbolism is indispensable for understanding the way in which God loves
his people: God makes himself known as the Bridegroom who loves Israel his
Bride.

If, in this relationship, God can be described as a “jealous God” (cf. Ex
20:5; Nah 1:2) and Israel denounced as an “adulterous” bride or
“prostitute” (cf. Hos 2:4-15; Ez 16:15-34), it is because of the
hope, reinforced by the prophets, of seeing Jerusalem become the perfect bride:
“For as a young man marries a virgin so shall your creator marry you, and as the
bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you” (Is
62:5). Recreated “in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in
mercy” (Hos 2:21), she who had wandered far away to search for life and
happiness in false gods will return, and “shall respond as in the days of her
youth” (Hos 2:17) to him who will speak to her heart; she will hear it
said: “Your bridegroom is your Creator” (Is54:5). It is substantially the
same reality which is expressed when, parallel to the mystery of God's action
through the male figure of the suffering Servant, the Book of the prophet Isaiah
evokes the feminine figure of Zion, adorned with a transcendence and a sanctity
which prefigure the gift of salvation destined for Israel.

The Song of Songs is an important moment in the use of this form of revelation.
In the words of a most human love, which celebrate the beauty of the human body
and the joy of mutual seeking, God's love for his people is also expressed. The
Church's recognition of her relationship to Christ in this audacious conjunction
of language about what is most human with language about what is most divine,
cannot be said to be mistaken.

In the course of the Old Testament, a story of salvation takes shape which
involves the simultaneous participation of male and female. While having an
evident metaphorical dimension, the terms bridegroom and bride – and covenant as
well – which characterize the dynamic of salvation, are much more than simple
metaphors. This spousal language touches on the very nature of the relationship
which God establishes with his people, even though that relationship is more
expansive than human spousal experience. Likewise, the same concrete conditions
of redemption are at play in the way in which prophetic statements, such as
those of Isaiah, associate masculine and feminine roles in proclaiming and
prefiguring the work of salvation which God is about to undertake. This
salvation orients the reader both toward the male figure of the suffering
Servant as well as to the female figure of Zion. The prophetic utterances of
Isaiah in fact alternate between this figure and the Servant of God, before
culminating at the end of the book with the mystical vision of Jerusalem, which
gives birth to a people in a single day (cf. Is 66: 7-14), a prophecy of
the great new things which God is about to do (cf. Is 48: 6-8).

10. All these prefigurations find their fulfillment in the New Testament. On the
one hand, Mary, the chosen daughter of Zion, in her femininity, sums up and
transfigures the condition of Israel/Bride waiting for the day of her salvation.
On the other hand, the masculinity of the Son shows how Jesus assumes in his
person all that the Old Testament symbolism had applied to the love of God for
his people, described as the love of a bridegroom for his bride. The figures of
Jesus and Mary his mother not only assure the continuity of the New Testament
with the Old, but go beyond it, since – as Saint Irenaeus wrote – with Jesus
Christ “all newness” appears.13

This aspect is particularly evident in the Gospel of John. In the scene of the
wedding feast at Cana, for example, Jesus is asked by his mother, who is called
“woman”, to offer, as a sign, the new wine of the future wedding with humanity
(cf. Jn 2:1-12). This messianic wedding is accomplished on the Cross
when, again in the presence of his mother, once again called “woman”, the
blood/wine of the New Covenant pours forth from the open heart of the crucified
Christ (cf. Jn 19:25-27, 34).14 It is therefore not at all
surprising that John the Baptist, when asked who he is, describes himself as
“the friend of the bridegroom”, who rejoices to hear the bridegroom's voice and
must be eclipsed by his coming: “He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the
friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the
bridegroom's voice; therefore this joy of mine is now full. He must increase,
but I must decrease” (Jn3:29-30).15

In his apostolic activity, Paul develops the whole nuptial significance of the
redemption by seeing Christian life as a nuptial mystery. He writes to the
Church in Corinth, which he had founded: “I feel a divine jealousy for you, for
I betrothed you to Christ to present you as a chaste virgin to her one husband”
(2 Cor 11:2).

In the Letter to the Ephesians, the spousal relationship between Christ and the
Church is taken up again and deepened in its implications. In the New Covenant,
the beloved bride is the Church, and as the Holy Father teaches in his Letter
to Families: “This bride, of whom the Letter to the Ephesians speaks, is
present in each of the baptized and is like one who presents herself before her
Bridegroom: ‘Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her..., that he
might present the Church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any
such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish' (Eph 5:25-27)”.
16

Reflecting on the unity of man and woman as described at the moment of the
world's creation (cf. Gn 2:24), the Apostle exclaims: “this mystery is a
profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church” (Eph
5:32). The love of a man and a woman, lived out in the power of baptismal life,
now becomes the sacrament of the love between Christ and his Church, and a
witness to the mystery of fidelity and unity from which the “New Eve” is born
and by which she lives in her earthly pilgrimage toward the fullness of the
eternal wedding.

11. Drawn into the Paschal mystery and made living signs of the love of Christ
and his Church, the hearts of Christian spouses are renewed and they are able to
avoid elements of concupiscence in their relationship, as well as the
subjugation introduced into the life of the first married couple by the break
with God caused by sin. For Christian spouses, the goodness of love, for which
the wounded human heart has continued to long, is revealed with new accents and
possibilities. It is in this light that Jesus, faced with the question about
divorce (cf. Mt 19:3-9), recalls the demands of the covenant between man
and woman as willed by God at the beginning, that is, before the eruption of sin
which had justified the later accommodations found in the Mosaic Law. Far from
being the imposition of a hard and inflexible order, these words of Jesus are
actually the proclamation of the “good news” of that faithfulness which is
stronger than sin. The power of the resurrection makes possible the victory of
faithfulness over weakness, over injuries and over the couple's sins. In the
grace of Christ which renews their hearts, man and woman become capable of being
freed from sin and of knowing the joy of mutual giving.

12. “For all of you who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ...
there is neither male nor female”, writes Saint Paul to the Galatians (3:27-28).
The Apostle Paul does not say that the distinction between man and woman, which
in other places is referred to the plan of God, has been erased. He means rather
that in Christ the rivalry, enmity and violence which disfigured the
relationship between men and women can be overcome and have been overcome. In
this sense, the distinction between man and woman is reaffirmed more than ever;
indeed, it is present in biblical revelation up to the very end. In the final
hour of present history, the Book of Revelation of Saint John, speaking of “a
new heaven and a new earth” (Rev 21:1), presents the vision of a feminine
Jerusalem “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev 21:2).
Revelation concludes with the words of the Bride and the Spirit who beseech the
coming of the Bridegroom, “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev22:20).

Male and female are thus revealed as belonging ontologically to creation
and destined therefore to outlast the present time, evidently in a
transfigured form. In this way, they characterize the “love that never ends” (1Cor
13:8), although the temporal and earthly expression of sexuality is
transient and ordered to a phase of life marked by procreation and death.
Celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom seeks to be the prophecy of this form of
future existence of male and female. For those who live it, it is an
anticipation of the reality of a life which, while remaining that of a man and a
woman, will no longer be subject to the present limitations of the marriage
relationship (cf. Mt22:30). For those in married life, celibacy becomes
the reminder and prophecy of the completion which their own relationship will
find in the face-to-face encounter with God.

From the first moment of their creation, man and woman are distinct, and will
remain so for all eternity. Placed within Christ's Paschal mystery, they no
longer see their difference as a source of discord to be overcome by denial or
eradication, but rather as the possibility for collaboration, to be cultivated
with mutual respect for their difference. From here, new perspectives open up
for a deeper understanding of the dignity of women and their role in human
society and in the Church.

III. THE IMPORTANCE OF FEMININE
VALUES IN THE LIFE OF SOCIETY

13. Among the fundamental values linked to women's actual lives is what has been
called a “capacity for the other”. Although a certain type of feminist rhetoric
makes demands “for ourselves”, women preserve the deep intuition of the goodness
in their lives of those actions which elicit life, and contribute to the growth
and protection of the other.

This intuition is linked to women's physical capacity to give life. Whether
lived out or remaining potential, this capacity is a reality that structures the
female personality in a profound way. It allows her to acquire maturity very
quickly, and gives a sense of the seriousness of life and of its
responsibilities. A sense and a respect for what is concrete develop in her,
opposed to abstractions which are so often fatal for the existence of
individuals and society. It is women, in the end, who even in very desperate
situations, as attested by history past and present, possess a singular capacity
to persevere in adversity, to keep life going even in extreme situations, to
hold tenaciously to the future, and finally to remember with tears the value of
every human life.

Although motherhood is a key element of women's identity, this does not mean
that women should be considered from the sole perspective of physical
procreation. In this area, there can be serious distortions, which extol
biological fecundity in purely quantitative terms and are often accompanied by
dangerous disrespect for women. The existence of the Christian vocation of
virginity, radical with regard to both the Old Testament tradition and the
demands made by many societies, is of the greatest importance in this regard.17
Virginity refutes any attempt to enclose women in mere biological destiny. Just
as virginity receives from physical motherhood the insight that there is no
Christian vocation except in the concrete gift of oneself to the other, so
physical motherhood receives from virginity an insight into its fundamentally
spiritual dimension: it is in not being content only to give physical life that
the other truly comes into existence. This means that motherhood can find forms
of full realization also where there is no physical procreation.18

In this perspective, one understands the irreplaceable role of women in all
aspects of family and social life involving human relationships and caring for
others. Here what John Paul II has termed the genius of women becomes
very clear.19 It implies first of all that women be significantly and
actively present in the family, “the primordial and, in a certain sense
sovereign society”,20 since it is here above all that the features of
a people take shape; it is here that its members acquire basic teachings. They
learn to love inasmuch as they are unconditionally loved, they learn respect for
others inasmuch as they are respected, they learn to know the face of God
inasmuch as they receive a first revelation of it from a father and a mother
full of attention in their regard. Whenever these fundamental experiences are
lacking, society as a whole suffers violence and becomes in turn the progenitor
of more violence. It means also that women should be present in the world of
work and in the organization of society, and that women should have access to
positions of responsibility which allow them to inspire the policies of nations
and to promote innovative solutions to economic and social problems.

In this regard, it cannot be forgotten that the interrelationship between these
two activities – family and work – has, for women, characteristics different
from those in the case of men. The harmonization of the organization of work and
laws governing work with the demands stemming from the mission of women within
the family is a challenge. The question is not only legal, economic and
organizational; it is above all a question of mentality, culture, and respect.
Indeed, a just valuing of the work of women within the family is required. In
this way, women who freely desire will be able to devote the totality of their
time to the work of the household without being stigmatized by society or
penalized financially, while those who wish also to engage in other work may be
able to do so with an appropriate work-schedule, and not have to choose between
relinquishing their family life or enduring continual stress, with negative
consequences for one's own equilibrium and the harmony of the family. As John
Paul II has written, “it will redound to the credit of society to make it
possible for a mother – without inhibiting her freedom, without psychological or
practical discrimination and without penalizing her as compared with other women
– to devote herself to taking care of her children and educating them in
accordance with their needs, which vary with age”.21

14. It is appropriate however to recall that the feminine values mentioned here
are above all human values: the human condition of man and woman created in the
image of God is one and indivisible. It is only because women are more
immediately attuned to these values that they are the reminder and the
privileged sign of such values. But, in the final analysis, every human being,
man or woman, is destined to be “for the other”. In this perspective, that which
is called “femininity” is more than simply an attribute of the female sex. The
word designates indeed the fundamental human capacity to live for the other and
because of the other.

Therefore, the promotion of women within society must be understood and desired
as a humanization accomplished through those values, rediscovered thanks to
women. Every outlook which presents itself as a conflict between the sexes is
only an illusion and a danger: it would end in segregation and competition
between men and women, and would promote a solipsism nourished by a false
conception of freedom.

Without prejudice to the advancement of women's rights in society and the
family, these observations seek to correct the perspective which views men as
enemies to be overcome. The proper condition of the male-female relationship
cannot be a kind of mistrustful and defensive opposition. Their relationship
needs to be lived in peace and in the happiness of shared love.

On a more concrete level, if social policies – in the areas of education, work,
family, access to services and civic participation – must combat all unjust
sexual discrimination, they must also listen to the aspirations and identify the
needs of all. The defence and promotion of equal dignity and common personal
values must be harmonized with attentive recognition of the difference and
reciprocity between the sexes where this is relevant to the realization of one's
humanity, whether male or female.

IV. THE IMPORTANCE
OF FEMININE VALUES
IN THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH

15. In the Church, woman as “sign” is more than ever central and fruitful,
following as it does from the very identity of the Church, as received from God
and accepted in faith. It is this “mystical” identity, profound and essential,
which needs to be kept in mind when reflecting on the respective roles of men
and women in the Church.

From the beginning of Christianity, the Church has understood herself to be a
community, brought into existence by Christ and joined to him by a relationship
of love, of which the nuptial experience is the privileged expression. From this
it follows that the Church's first task is to remain in the presence of this
mystery of God's love, manifested in Jesus Christ, to contemplate and to
celebrate it. In this regard, the figure of Mary constitutes the fundamental
reference in the Church. One could say metaphorically that Mary is a mirror
placed before the Church, in which the Church is invited to recognize her own
identity as well as the dispositions of the heart, the attitudes and the actions
which God expects from her.

The existence of Mary is an invitation to the Church to root her very being in
listening and receiving the Word of God, because faith is not so much the search
for God on the part of human beings, as the recognition by men and women that
God comes to us; he visits us and speaks to us. This faith, which believes that
“nothing is impossible for God” (cf. Gn18:14; Lk 1:37), lives and
becomes deeper through the humble and loving obedience by which the Church can
say to the Father: “Let it be done to me according to your word” (Lk
1:38). Faith continually makes reference to Jesus: “Do whatever he tells you” (Jn
2:5) and accompanies Jesus on his way, even to the foot of the Cross. Mary,
in the hour of darkness, perseveres courageously in faithfulness, with the sole
certainty of trust in the Word of God.

It is from Mary that the Church always learns the intimacy of Christ. Mary, who
carried the small child of Bethlehem in her arms, teaches us to recognize the
infinite humility of God. She who received the broken body of Jesus from the
Cross shows the Church how to receive all those in this world whose lives have
been wounded by violence and sin. From Mary, the Church learns the meaning of
the power of love, as revealed by God in the life of his beloved Son: “he has
scattered the proud in the thoughts of their heart... he has lifted up the
lowly” (Lk 1:51-52). From Mary, the disciples of Christ continually
receive the sense and the delight of praise for the work of God's hands: “The
Almighty has done great things for me” (Lk1:49). They learn that they are
in the world to preserve the memory of those “great things”, and to keep vigil
in expectation of the day of the Lord.

16. To look at Mary and imitate her does not mean, however, that the Church
should adopt a passivity inspired by an outdated conception of femininity. Nor
does it condemn the Church to a dangerous vulnerability in a world where what
count above all are domination and power. In reality, the way of Christ is
neither one of domination (cf. Phil 2:6) nor of power as understood by
the world (cf. Jn18:36). From the Son of God one learns that this
“passivity” is in reality the way of love; it is a royal power which vanquishes
all violence; it is “passion” which saves the world from sin and death and
recreates humanity. In entrusting his mother to the Apostle John, Jesus on the
Cross invites his Church to learn from Mary the secret of the love that is
victorious.

Far from giving the Church an identity based on an historically conditioned
model of femininity, the reference to Mary, with her dispositions of listening,
welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting, places the Church in
continuity with the spiritual history of Israel. In Jesus and through him, these
attributes become the vocation of every baptized Christian. Regardless of
conditions, states of life, different vocations with or without public
responsibilities, they are an essential aspect of Christian life. While these
traits should be characteristic of every baptized person, women in fact live
them with particular intensity and naturalness. In this way, women play a role
of maximum importance in the Church's life by recalling these dispositions to
all the baptized and contributing in a unique way to showing the true face of
the Church, spouse of Christ and mother of believers.

In this perspective one understands how the reservation of priestly ordination
solely to men22 does not hamper in any way women's access to the
heart of Christian life. Women are called to be unique examples and witnesses
for all Christians of how the Bride is to respond in love to the love of the
Bridegroom.

CONCLUSION

17. In Jesus Christ all things have been made new (cf. Rev 21:5). Renewal
in grace, however, cannot take place without conversion of heart. Gazing at
Jesus and confessing him as Lord means recognizing the path of love, triumphant
over sin, which he sets out for his disciples.

In this way, man's relationship with woman is transformed, and the three-fold
concupiscence described in the First Letter of John (1 Jn 2:16) ceases to
have the upper hand. The witness of women's lives must be received with respect
and appreciation, as revealing those values without which humanity would be
closed in self-sufficiency, dreams of power and the drama of violence. Women
too, for their part, need to follow the path of conversion and recognize the
unique values and great capacity for loving others which their femininity bears.
In both cases, it is a question of humanity's conversion to God, so that both
men and women may come to know God as their “helper”, as the Creator full of
tenderness, as the Redeemer who “so loved the world that he gave his only
begotten Son” (Jn 3:16).

Such a conversion cannot take place without humble prayer to God for that
penetrating gaze which is able to recognize one's own sin and also the grace
which heals it. In a particular way, we need to ask this of the Blessed Virgin
Mary, the woman in accord with the heart of God, she who is “blessed among
women” (cf. Lk 1:42), chosen to reveal to men and women the way of love.
Only in this way, can the “image of God”, the sacred likeness inscribed in every
man and woman, emerge according to the specific grace received by each (cf.
Gn 1:27). Only thus can the path of peace and wonderment be recovered,
witnessed in the verses of the Song of Songs, where bodies and hearts celebrate
the same jubilee.

The Church certainly knows the power of sin at work in individuals and in
societies, which at times almost leads one to despair of the goodness of married
couples. But through her faith in Jesus crucified and risen, the Church knows
even more the power of forgiveness and self-giving in spite of any injury or
injustice. The peace and wonderment which she trustfully proposes to men and
women today are the peace and wonderment of the garden of the resurrection,
which have enlightened our world and its history with the revelation that “God
is love” (1 Jn 4:8,16).

The Sovereign Pontiff John Paul II, in the Audience granted to the undersigned
Cardinal Prefect, approved the present Letter, adopted in the Ordinary Session
of this Congregation, and ordered its publication.

Rome, from the Offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, May
31, 2004, the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

2On the complex question of gender, see also The Pontifical Council for
the Family, Family, Marriage and “De facto unions” (July 26, 2000), 8.

3Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Fides et ratio (September 14, 1998),
21: AAS 91 (1999), 22: “This opening to the mystery, which came to
him [biblical man] through Revelation, was for him, in the end, the source of
true knowledge. It was this which allowed his reason to enter the realm of the
infinite where an understanding for which until then he had not dared to hope
became a possibility”.

5The Hebrew word ezer which is translated as “helpmate” indicates the
assistance which only a person can render to another. It carries no implication
of inferiority or exploitation if we remember that God too is at times called
ezer with regard to human beings (cf. Ex 18:4; Ps10:14).

14The ancient exegetical tradition sees in Mary at Cana the “figura Synagogae”
and the “inchoatio Ecclesiae”.

15Here the Fourth Gospel presents in a deeper way an element found also in the
Synoptic Gospels (cf. Mt 9:15 and parallel texts). On the theme of Christ
the Bridegroom, see John Paul II, Letter to Families (February 2, 1994),
18: AAS 86 (1994), 906-910.